Built With Purpose,
Finished With Care
Some professional partnerships are purely transactional. Then there are those built on a shared set of beliefs so clear and so consistent that the work itself becomes the argument. Ambre Fisher and Jeff Haz, the founders of Sonoma Design Build, belong firmly in the latter category. Between them, they carry over 45 years of combined experience across construction, project management, and luxury home renovation — and yet what defines this Victoria-based studio is not volume of work, but depth of philosophy.
Ambre distills it cleanly: “The Considered Home.” Three words that carry the full weight of what Sonoma Design Build stands for — materiality with meaning, craft over convenience, and spaces built to outlast the people who commission them.
Ambre’s path into design was never a straight line, and that is precisely what makes her perspective so distinct. A fine art lover from childhood, she studied art history, music, and various forms of mark, fabric, and model making before earning a degree in Communication and Culture that took her to Latin America. Every summer brought her back to Europe, sketchbooks and camera in hand, absorbing museum collections and architectural traditions that would later inform every project she touched.
Her technical foundation came through a rigorous, juried two-and-a-half-year interior design programme at BCIT — one rooted in architectural blueprints, spatial engineering, and human-centred design for both commercial and residential contexts. She began taking on private clients as early as 2010, moving through some of Victoria’s most respected interior design firms before establishing her own voice. The first chapter of her career was shaped by commercial builds — hotels, restaurants, public spaces — and the second by high-end residential and yacht work, where her conviction around longevity and considered materiality found its fullest expression.
Jeff’s formation could not look more different on paper, and yet the values it produced are strikingly aligned. He has worked in construction and development since the early 1990s, bringing with him a decade of service in the Canadian Armed Forces as a Military Police Officer. “I see the precision, integrity and communication skills gained during my time there translate seamlessly into my work today,” he says. His job sites are focused and safe. His standards are non-negotiable. And his belief that things should be built right the first time — every time — is something Ambre would say without hesitation herself.
Being rooted on Vancouver Island is not incidental to Sonoma Design Build’s work — it is foundational to it. The West Coast offers a depth of resource and cultural influence that Ambre and Jeff draw from deliberately: quality, local materials and artisans, antique, original and vintage finds, and the multicultural layers that define the region’s character. Sustainability here is not a marketing position. It is a practice, built into every specification from the first site visit forward.
Ambre has long held that “the most sustainable design is through restoration and preservation,” and her philosophy on landfill-bound interiors is equally direct: cycling through pieces every few years because of fleeting trends is, in her words, sustainable interior design’s enemy. The Island’s material richness allows Sonoma to honour that conviction in tangible ways — sourcing locally, restoring thoughtfully, and building spaces that carry a sense of place rather than a moment in time.
What unites Ambre and Jeff, beyond skill and shared geography, is an almost stubborn refusal to default to the obvious. Neither of them chases trends. Jeff puts it plainly: “Don’t copy what you see online over and over, as it will date and you’ll be dissatisfied down the road.”
Ambre’s own design muses — among them Kelly Wearstler, whose work she has studied since the early 2000s — are those who remain timeless precisely because they never followed the current.
The result is a studio where the relationship with the client is treated as seriously as the construction itself. Jeff counts his favourite projects not by scope or scale, but by the quality of the working relationship: “I always enjoy working with like-minded people who appreciate the process and are open to trying new things.” Ambre echoes this in the way she approaches every brief — listening first, guiding always, and taking the overwhelm out of a process that can otherwise feel relentless.
The Considered Home is not simply a philosophy. At Sonoma Design Build, it is the standard.